Mental Health Services in Tupelo, Mississippi

Levels of care, from lightest to most intensive

Knowing the levels makes it much easier to ask for the right thing on a first phone call.

• Outpatient therapy or counseling: scheduled sessions, usually weekly or every other week, while you continue normal life
• Medication management: appointments with a physician, psychiatrist or psychiatric nurse practitioner who can prescribe and review medication
• Intensive outpatient and partial hospitalisation: several hours of structured treatment a week, while living at home
• Inpatient or residential treatment: round the clock care during an acute period
• Emergency care: immediate response when someone is at risk of harm

Who does what

Counselors and therapists provide talking treatment. Prescribers manage medication. Psychologists may also carry out formal testing. These roles often work alongside each other, and it is common to see a therapist weekly while a separate prescriber reviews medication every few months.

You do not have to decide which one you need before making contact. Describing what has been happening is enough; a licensed provider can help sort out the right starting point.

Where outpatient therapy fits

For most concerns people bring to a Tupelo provider, mood, anxiety, grief, relationship strain, life changes, work pressure, outpatient therapy is the appropriate and least disruptive starting point. It also functions as the follow on step after a higher level of care.

If the situation is urgent

This website does not provide crisis or emergency services and cannot respond to urgent messages. If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 911. In the United States you can call or text 988 at any hour to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, which is staffed 24 hours a day.

Emergency departments in the region can assess and stabilise someone in acute distress, and they can arrange onward referral.

Paying for care

Outpatient sessions are billed per session. Many plans include outpatient mental health benefits, but the copay, deductible and network status differ by plan. Confirm benefits with your insurer as well as with the provider, and ask for the self pay rate if you are not using insurance.